Connecticut western news., 1887-07-27
L0ndSliDS,


 Speringer the London Standard says: Many of the Swiss villages exist almost on sufferance The avalanche of snow or the avalanche of earth may at any mo- ment sweep them away, or, what IS equally ruinous, overwhelm them with the debris of the mountain at the foot of which they are built. In not few instances the land- slip is so slow in its progress that 1t is only question of time when the final catastrophe will be precipitated. At Bee Rouge in the Tarentaise, for example, the side of the mountain is gradually overwhelming the village of Miroir. In most cases, however, the ealamity is sudden and unexpected. Such an in stance is supplied by the fall of the Ross berg, well-known mountain 5000 feet high, situated just behind the better known and loftier Rigl. In 1906, after very rainy season, large portion of the mountain, consisting of beds of hard sandstone, and pudding stone, resting on soft sandy lavers, suddenly swept across the valley of Goldau, burying four VII. lages, comprising over 300 houses, nearly 500 inhabitants and more than S5 square miles of fertile land. In 1855 mass of debris slid into the valley of the Tiber, which, damned back by the obstruc- tion, overt1owed the village of San Stefano to the depth of 50. feet, until the drowned village was relieved by means of a hastily constructed canal. Another example of disastrous landslip is that in which, by the adding of a DOT tion of Monte Como, the entire village of Plurs, with ?, 43O inhabitants, was in 161S overwhelmed. For several days be- fore the catastrophe masses of rock had become detached from the mountain, and numerous Assures were observed to form or widen on its sides. But the viii lagers disregarded the warnings, and were in few minutes buried, with all their possessions, beneath sixty feet of rock and earth. All attempts to pene- trate the mass proved fruitless, and no trace of the town has since been seen. The earth which entombed it is now clothed with luxuriant forest of chest nuts, but the original name still survives in the little village of Plurs, or Pluro.
 It may almost be said that these catas- trophes are so frequent that history pre- serves the memory of only the most dis astrous. Such one was that by which the village of Elm was overwhelmed only few years ago. At that time the place kNontained fifty houses and nearly 25O in habitants, most of them children and old 4 people. Nearly half of them were killed, while most of the dwelling houses were altogether crushed or buried heneath the debris from that portion of the Tschin- gel Alp, which broke away from its par ent mountain. Altogether, though the Elm catastrophe was, in the loss of life and property, of less magnitude than those which overlook Plurs and Goldau, it is doubtful whether it did not, in the amount of rubbish shot from the mountain side, surpass both of these gigantic landslides. The Swiss gcolo- gists who visited the spot immediately after the disaster calculated that, at the lowest estimate, the contents of the slip measures 10, 900, 900 cubic metres. What vast amount of material this pile con. tains may be grasped by simple illus tration Zurich is city of 76,OOO in habitants, yet in the debris shot iron the side of the Tschingel Alp there was stone enough to build two Zurichs. Some of the blocks are hcaped 300 ol 400 feet higher than the village of Elm One IS estimated to weigh 5000 tons, and as these gigantic missiles were pre- cipitated from height of 2OOO feet tn, irresistible force with which they fel on the doomed villages can easily b. imagined.